Is clean energy exploding? Part 1
Good signs mask hidden uncertainties
Buddy hated suspense. Here he’s wondering what just arrived and what might come next.
Growth of wind and solar power has been spectacular. Output is way up, costs are way down. So the Administration’s goals of sustainably generating 80% of our electricity across America by 2030 suddenly seem realistic. Right?
Yes, that’s right—if we’re just talking about the ‘generating’ part of it. But while we’re celebrating all those new sources, most of us don’t understand that it’s the ‘across America’ part that’s going to be really difficult.
Solar panels and wind turbines have to connect to our toasters, not to mention to our buses, our farms and manufacturing plants, and most of the other power needs in our lives. Analysts are saying that, with connectivity challenges, getting America’s electrical power grid to transmit 80% of our needs by 2030 will be near impossible.
Even as last year’s Inflation Reduction Act is pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into clean energy technologies,
Failing to accelerate transmission expansion beyond the recent historical pace (1% a year) could forfeit about half of the emissions reductions that might otherwise be achieved. [Utility Dive]
More transmissions lines?
There are big roadblocks between all those wind turbines and our toasters. Here are some.
Cost
Lots more sections of the grid need to be built.
New wind, solar, and storage projects have paid higher network upgrade costs. Many are in places where transmission lines are already near capacity, which require more to be built to accommodate new generators. In other cases, large wind and solar projects are located far from the population centers they serve, requiring new substations and long-distance transmission lines. [US Dept of Energy]
Storage
To use sustainable energy effectively, America’s grid needs a huge amount of storage.
Power supply varies. It’s only when the wind blows or the sun shines that we get that electricity. If it can’t be stored, it’s lost. The grid needs huge batteries to accumulate power when the sun and the wind are doing their things, then to disperse that power at night and on calm days.
Demand varies. Apart from smaller day-to-day changes, severe weather events (particularly heat) have increased big power outages in the US from around fifty per year in the early 2000s to more than a hundred on average in recent years. The electricity to keep hundreds of people from dying - as they have from heat stroke in Phoenix or hypothermia in Texas - must come from batteries.
The permit process
The safeguards we want are killing us.
More than 10,000 energy projects—mostly wind, solar and batteries—were seeking permission to connect to electric grids at the end of 2022, up from 5,600 two years earlier. Grid operators have become overwhelmed by the volume. It now takes five years for the typical power plant to get approval, twice what it did a decade ago, and developers say the process has become dysfunctional. [Brad Plumer, New York Times]
New permitting rules are on the way but, because they apply equally to fossil-fuel projects, they’re divisive.
Political resistance
Conservatives have long opposed clean energy in most of its forms. Today, however, it’s the progressives who are slowing down key transmission projects. Buddy’s former neighbors on Cape Cod have managed to keep wind turbines out of Nantucket Sound —out of their ocean views—for decades. Environmentalists all across the country fear wind turbines will kill birds, make lots of noise, or simply spoil the look of America.
Distribution kills more businesses than products
The biggest question posed by venture capitalists to inventors, entrepreneurs (not to mention newsletter writers) has not been “How great is your offering?” It’s “How are you going to market, promote, and distribute it?”
What we can do
We can be encouraged. We mustn’t let newsletter writers wringing their hands depress us. For two big reasons:
First, the grid is—surprise—doing better already, regardless of heat records being broken all over the country. Florida is seeing heat index values of up to 115 degrees this week. Scorching temperatures have covered much of the Southwest, recently expanding into the Midwest and Northeast. But so far there have been no power blackouts or brownouts.
Expanding solar and wind power sources have helped, along with more hydro this summer thanks to more rain, better planning by power authorities, and various ‘demand response’ programs where consumers are given rebates to lower their energy use when demand is highest during the day.
And there’s another big reason to be encouraged. That will be the subject of next week’s newsletter. (This is the first two-part ClimateDog letter ever. That’s because Buddy really hated suspense.)
LEARN, THINK, ACT
Read about spectacular growth and clean energy’s battle for hearts and minds.
And about the ways in which the US power grid isn't ready for climate change.
There are some surprising friends and foes of clean energy.
Why summer's extreme heat waves haven't caused any blackouts.
I really appreciate your candor, David, and your terrific writing—sprinkled with just a bit of humor to help make the medicine go down. Thank you for continuing to keep us so well informed, and clear about how we can take action. You are one of the great voices in the forest of climate change confusion. Thank you!